Ten Ways To Cope With Your Company's Dumb Rules

Society is moving fast, but company rules are not keeping up. Many if not most large and medium-sized employers (and way too many small companies, too) still follow outdated and pointless HR policies.

They don't realize how much damage their company rules do. No one can get excited about their work when they're treated like a child or a criminal.

Here are ten ways to cope with your employer's dumb rules.

Taking little steps toward humanizing your workplace will grow your muscles. That's the best exercise you can get at work!

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Ten Ways To Cope With Your Employer's Dumb Rules

1. When you hear or read something that doesn't make sense in your company's handbook or policy manual, ask a question about it. Ask your manager about it. I was an HR leader and luckily my co-workers questioned our policies all the time. Their questions got me to say "Wait, this policy is dumb. Let's scrap it." Unless they are pushed off course, people will keep doing something just because it's what they have always done.

2. Do your research. If your company enacts a rule that horrifies you and your co-workers, get some background on the rule using your awesome internet research skills! HR fads are no different from fashion trends that are hot for a few years and then die off. Most HR fads, unfortunately, are pointless and annoying to employees. Read blogs and listen to podcasts on the topic your company's dumb new rule addresses. That will help you form an argument in favor of reviewing, revising or junking the new policy.

3. When appropriate, break a company rule that doesn't make sense -- this is one of the most common ways bad policies evolve. It goes without saying that you cannot break the law, put yourself or anyone else in danger, skip or cut corners on any process that is subject to regulatory control or mess with anybody's money. Beyond that, rule-bending is a principal way that bad rules eventually get changed. It is time for a lot of dusty workplace rules (rules barring tattoos, fussy dress code policies, requiring doctors' notes when people are sick, etc.) to go extinct. The more irrelevant a rule becomes, the faster it will slide into oblivion. The more often employees ignore the rule, the faster that will happen.

4. It is good to have your manager's support when you are proposing any big idea at work, whether it is a new-product concept or the abolition of the company's Mad Men era performance-review systems. It is good to have your boss's support but it is not essential. Lots of managers will tell "Yes, please bring up that issue to HR -- I support you in doing that!" but they will not say a peep to publicly support you. They are waiting to see how the wind blows. That's okay -- your muscles are big and your mojo tank is full! You can gather like-minded co-workers together, craft a proposal and meet with your HR manager to walk through it.

5. Chambers of Commerce and Employers Councils publish surveys on HR practices every year. Get one of those surveys and see how common or uncommon your company's most loathsome policies are. You may be able to get an outdated rule abolished just by pointing out that nobody else has that rule in place anymore.

6. Suggest a better alternative. One day my co-worker Frank came into my office to say "We have a bad provision in our travel policy. I can't get reimbursed for a movie in my hotel room." "I didn't know that," I said, "but what do you propose instead?" "I skipped the company-paid dinner and entertainment after a long day in the trade show booth," said Frank. "The Sales VP took everybody out and he would have taken me out too, but I was tired. The bill for dinner and a show was easily a hundred bucks a person, but I can't watch one movie for a few bucks?" "What you say makes sense," I said. "Can you please send one paragraph on the policy you would propose to replace the one we've got?" Frank sent me a paragraph and we enacted a new policy that didn't penalize traveling employees for declining a group dinner invitation to catch a film in their own hotel room. It takes a lot of different brains to run a company, and to make a healthy culture!

7. Some company rules or unwritten "guidelines" actually violate the law. There is a tremendous amount of information available online about wage and hour laws, employment discrimination laws and other laws that affect working people. If your company's rules break the law, that's a great reason to talk with HR, not as an adversary on the opposite side of a position but as a friend of the company who wants to see them abiding by employment laws and staying out of trouble!

8. Take the long view. Every new job you will ever have will be like a new level in a video game. Each new level has greater rewards than the level below it but it also has new challenges, and the challenges get harder. That's okay because as you move up in the video game, your muscles keep growing. You must decide now as we start a new year why you have the job you have, if you are working now. What did you come to this level of the video game to accumulate and to collect? If you look ahead and see that you're not likely to still be in the job this time next year, the stupid rules may be easier to deal with. In that case, you are just passing through!

9. Make an escape plan. Everybody knows how painful it is to listen to a smart and capable full-grown person complain about their job as though they were rooted in place and couldn't possibly make a change. You don't want to be that person! A company that runs by ancient, petty rules is not a place for a brilliant person like you to waste any more time in. If your company's culture is sucking your mojo away, why not start planning your escape right now?

10. Put a human face on the issue. Many a stiff and businesslike CEO has changed their position on a policy that affected their employees when somebody they knew personally was impacted. If you want to get rid of your company's stupid policies, put a human face on each issue you want to address. I have gently nudged many HR leaders to ditch obnoxious policies by inviting them to talk to the very employees who suffered under those policies -- and then to try to defend the policy's continued existence.

One of these HR Directors (we will call her Jill) was reluctant to give up the policy that required employees to bring in a funeral notice when one of their loved ones died.

Jill felt, as many HR people do, that employees might abuse the company's bereavement leave policy, even to the point of inventing a family member only to claim attendance at their imaginary funeral and get a few days' paid time off.

I told Jill "That could happen. I have seen that take place. So what? It's a few days' pay. The person who manages that employee is probably going to be able to tell that the employee has issues or is struggling somehow."

More and more HR and leadership teams are moving away from the old paradigm "There are good, loyal employees and conniving, thieving ones -- and our policies must be written to protect against the bad guys!" and focusing instead on the health and trust level on their teams.

I told Jill "If an employee rips off your company for two days' pay, the world will still turn. What sort of message do you send to all of your employees, from your beloved assistant Magda to every other person on your team, when you tell them that you won't believe their relative died until they show you written proof?

"What a statement for their own employer to make, at a moment of their greatest loss and need!"

Jill agreed to talk with the three employees who had taken bereavement leave most recently and who had been required to bring in a funeral notice in order to get paid for the leave.

The minute Jill got on the phone with each person and offered her condolences on their loss, the point of the phone calls shined through.

Jill finished the three calls and said "I'm exhausted. I heard my three teammates' stories and I asked their opinion about our bereavement policy, and they all said that having to bring in a funeral notice was a real knife in their heart after their loved one passed on."

One person said "My whole department was with me, right by my side as my mom was declining and when she died. My supervisor was a great support to me, but she still had to tell me that I had to as the funeral director for a piece of paper to prove my mom died. That's just sad."

The policy disappeared one week later.

"Every policy we don't have to administer and regulate leaves us more time to listen and respond to our employees," said Jill.

Maybe your company's leaders can learn from Jill's story -- as well as from you!

I was a Fortune 500 HR SVP for 10 million years, but I was an opera singer before I ever heard the term HR. The higher I got in the corporate world, the more operatic the action became. I started writing about the workplace for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1997. Now I write for...